Streams

Closing Broadway

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Mayor Bloomberg announced today that the city will close two sections of Broadway to vehicle traffic starting this spring. Already, the plan has supporters and opponents. Truck driver Telly Davis was delivering props to a theater on 45th street today. He says losing five blocks of Broadway will make his job tougher.

'Why do I want to sit in traffic longer than I have to just to get down the street. I mean it's already crowded down here people have stopped looking at the light, enough's enough!'

But tourist Iris Cohen likes the planned pedestrian zones. She says they've already been a big success in her native Israel.

'We have many of them and people prefer to go on boardwalk or this closed street and kids they can go with parents, I think it's great.'

About two acres of roadway will be taken away from drivers, but the Department of Transportation predicts traffic will flow more smoothly. That's because Broadway cuts across the avenues at both Times Square and Herald Square, creating traffic snarls.

I think it's ridiculous. The subway is packed! We need every form of transportation we can get, not less. This is lowbrow thinking for tourists and they don't vote. How does Bloomberg get around... SUV motorcade!

NYC best pay attention to that subtle rhythym of the street - the interplay between commercial activity, pedestrians, and cars. Shut down one and the whole thing changes, and not always for the overall betterment. Look at what happened the office blocks of the West Fifties between Fifth and Sixth avenues after they were redeveloped from lively streets of jazz clubs to office superblocks with lots of service bays and blank walls. Nobody wants to walk down those streets if they can help it. Same with State Street in Chicago. By eliminating cars on this section of Broadway, the Mayor may provide pedestrians more space, but the street will FEEL different and it may not feel better. Furthermore, what happened to public hearings on matters of public policy? I know the Mayor is keen to make these changes as part of PlaNYC, but I've been trying to get a street sign changed in front of my building for 2-1/2 years and can't and this gets announced and in 4 months it'll be done! I'm all in favor of innovation but how about providing for some public input. And I don't just mean the Community Boards.

I really hope this idea works. I'm a big supporter, and I hope New York one day will be a car free city and a world leading Green City. We need to do more recycling, more energy saving, and start carbon emissions reduction, we are far form that now.

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